Dispatches from the new Russian empire

And Now I’m a Teacher

Yesterday was the last day of my Teach English as a Foreign Language Course and now I can officially teach English in Saint Petersburg. In honor of this occasion, I want to share two examples of the enigmatic and fickle nature of the English language.

The first is an excerpt of the poem Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenite:

I take it you already know

Of tough and bough and cough and dough

Others may stumble but not you

On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.

Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,

To Learn of less familiar traps!

Beware of heard, a dreadful word

That looks like beard and sounds like bird,

And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead —

For goodness sake don’t call it deed!

Watch out for meat and great and threat

(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).

The second is a video made by NYC based production company Collabo! depicting a Borges poem